But mebby he won’t do it; he often makes plans he don’t carry out and he gits things wrong––he did the very first minute we got there.
We arrove in Venice about the middle of the afternoon, and as Robert had writ ahead for rooms, a man wuz waitin’ with a sizeable gondola to take us to our tarven.
When Josiah see it drawin’ nigh he sez to me, soty vosy, “Never, never, will I ride in a hearse; I wouldn’t in Jonesville and I won’t in Italy; not till my time comes, I won’t.”
But I whispered back agin to keep still, it wuzn’t a hearse. But, to tell the truth, it did look some like one, painted black as a coal. But, seein’ the rest of us embark, he, too, sot sail in it. He didn’t have to go a great ways before it stopped at our tarven, which wuz once a palace, and I kinder hummed to myself while I wuz washin’ me and puttin’ on a clean collar and cuffs:
“’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,” puttin’ the main emphasis on palaces. But Josiah catched up the refrain and sung it quite loud, or what he calls singin’:
Be it ever so humbly,
There’s no place like hum.
He looked round the vast, chilly, bare apartment, the lofty walls, the marble floors, with here and there a rug layin’ like a leaf on a sidewalk, and I kinder echoed it. Sez he feelin’ly and sort of plaintively, “I’d ruther have less ornaments and more comfort.”
I sez, “It is very grand and spacious.”
And he sez, “I’d give the hull of the space and throw in the grandeur for a good big fire and a plate of your nut cakes.”